Running at 55-60fps but if you looked at my screen you'd guess 10-15. Anyone else?

[YukonWildAss]

Hello everyone,

I'm really at a loss here. I'm sorry for bothering you all with this but I've been trying to figure it out for myself since launch and I have had no luck.
I'm running Windows 7, i7-930, 6gb ram, and a Radeon HD 5870. I'm running FFXIV at 2xAA, 8 General Draw Quality, 3 Background Drawing Quality, Standard Shadow Detail, AA Off, Depth of Field Off.
With these setting I'm generally maxed out at 60 fps in most places outside of town (About 25-30 inside town). The thing is that when I drop down to around 50-55fps out of town my game is just not smooth anymore. This is especially noticeable when gathering. At 55fps the botany bar stutters and it feels like I'm at 10-15fps. I can't understand this and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar?

Also, are there any 5870 owners out there that are running the game on higher settings and playing smoothly? I tried running the game on all maxed out settings and my FPS was locked at 1. I turned off AO and tried again and my fps was 1-3. I'm not expecting to run everything completely maxed, but 1 fps just seems wrong

If anyone can help in anyway or give any suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it!

Thanks

[Jamison]

I'm not sure I can give great advice, but I do remember that a number of 5850/5870 owners have mentioned a problem like this. I've a 5850 myself and do notice studdering... the latest drivers did have it fixed up until the Nov 25th update... now it's bad again.

There's also been mention by a couple of people having a similar problem with a WD 500gig hard drive. Any chance that's what you have?

[MrJosho]

I'm using a 5850 too, and cant for the life of me get the game to run smoothly on decent settings, which it should really be able to do.
Funny thing is though I was running the game nicely at the start of retail with 4xAA, most things on high and DoF on. Now I'm playing with 2xAA
and settings mostly on standard and still getting stutter Also getting this shitty graphic bug with trees now where they go semi-transparent / speckly
every time they move (which is always in Limsa).

Just out of curiosity what settings are people using / not using in Catalyst Control Center? not sure why but I think that could be messing things up.

[YukonWildAss]

I'm not sure I can give great advice, but I do remember that a number of 5850/5870 owners have mentioned a problem like this. I've a 5850 myself and do notice studdering... the latest drivers did have it fixed up until the Nov 25th update... now it's bad again.
There's also been mention by a couple of people having a similar problem with a WD 500gig hard drive. Any chance that's what you have?

I do have a 750gb WD but I have FFXIV isntalled on my OCZ Vertex 2 60GB.

MrJosho,
AA: Use Application Settings
Antisotropic Filtering: Use Application Settings
Minimap Detail Level: "Performance"
Anti-Aliasing Mode: Multi-sample AA

I had Minimap Detail and Anti-Aliasing Mode maxed out yesterday and lowering them to these settings did seem to help some. I also OC'ed my i7-930 to 4.0 from 2.8. This helped to keep me maxed out in a lot of areas at 60 fps but I still start stuttering right when I drop below 60. I upped my graphics and was at a steady 25-30 fps but the game was completely unplayable. I played FFXI at 20fps and it didn't lag to my eyes at all while FFXIV looks like its dying at 20-25fps. I'm so confused!

[Hyan]

Fucking ATI, that's all..

My game had huge problems before no matter which drivers I tried. I finally got some modded drivers that seem to fix most of my problems. The only annoying thing is that youtube videos still make me lag like hell while in-game.

The mod guy also recommends removing CCC.exe and MOM.exe from the task manager before playing, as they seem to cause stuttering. Could try that out.

[YukonWildAss]

Thanks, I'll try shutting those two .exe down next time I play.

And I have the same problem when watching a stream or a youtube video, the lag is ridiculous. I can put up with it while crafting and running somewhere, but otherwise I have to close out.

[Arximiro]

Fucking ATI, that's all..

My game had huge problems before no matter which drivers I tried. I finally got some modded drivers that seem to fix most of my problems. The only annoying thing is that youtube videos still make me lag like hell while in-game.

The mod guy also recommends removing CCC.exe and MOM.exe from the task manager before playing, as they seem to cause stuttering. Could try that out.

Holy shit me too! Is this normal for Youtube videos to fuck up FFXIV? I have a 5770 and anytime I try to watch youtube videos with FFXIV on the other monitor they run all choppy and FFXIV runs like a pos, although I can run 720p local video fullscreen alongside FFXIV just fine.

[Jojimbo]

Holy shit me too! Is this normal for Youtube videos to fuck up FFXIV? I have a 5770 and anytime I try to watch youtube videos with FFXIV on the other monitor they run all choppy and FFXIV runs like a pos, although I can run 720p local video fullscreen alongside FFXIV just fine.

I think that's to do with the cards changing to the freq they use for flash content, these are lower than what is used for 3D stuff like video games. Unfortunately it will underclock the card even if you are running a 3D app, instead of just leaving the freqs at their max.

[aGhast]

That's right. The clock speeds are changing while viewing flash content because hardware acceleration is enabled. I think this was an addition with Flash 10.1. To disable this acceleration, and to keep you clocks at their max 3D speeds while gaming, do the following:

-Right click any flash video (Youtube, etc)
-Click Settings
-Untick 'Enable hardware acceleration'

All the rendering is then done by the CPU and your GPU is left out of it. Hope this helps. I know it frustrated me for quite some time before I found out what was going on.

[LinktheDeme]

This may be a silly question but what is the screen size of your monitor? Or rather what resolution are you running it on?

[YukonWildAss]

I love you aGhast, thank you!

[shidobu]

That's right. The clock speeds are changing while viewing flash content because hardware acceleration is enabled. I think this was an addition with Flash 10.1. To disable this acceleration, and to keep you clocks at their max 3D speeds while gaming, do the following:

-Right click any flash video (Youtube, etc)
-Click Settings
-Untick 'Enable hardware acceleration'

All the rendering is then done by the CPU and your GPU is left out of it. Hope this helps. I know it frustrated me for quite some time before I found out what was going on.

fucking 1000 internets

[Sign]

Another cause of stuttering I have found in my own system (using a 4870 and even on my 6870) was the windowing program I was using. When using the windower process by Cliff (or was it Aikar?) the game would stutter like a bitch at all times, when I switched to a copy of windowerxiv I had downloaded before the site was pulled the stuttering went away.

[YukonWildAss]

This may be a silly question but what is the screen size of your monitor? Or rather what resolution are you running it on?

I'm running at 1920x1200 on a 25.5" monitor.

[Hyan]

fucking 1000 internets

+1

[LinktheDeme]

I'm running at 1920x1200 on a 25.5" monitor.

When you use a bigger monitor size and use a better resolution it takes a lot more work for the video card to render the things. Even one size up or down is a HUGE improvement in lag of ffxiv is what i've noticed. That may or may not be the issue. I would check the settings of other people with the same card and monitor size/resolution.

[YukonWildAss]

Overclocking my CPU has helped a lot with performance. I'm now running at
8xAA
8 General Draw Quality
3 Background Drawing Quality
Highest Shadow Detail
Highest Texture Detail
Highest (Can't remember the other one below Texture Detail)
AO Off
Depth of Field Off

I hover between 50-60fps with these settings. I'm happy with these improvements but I still see what seems to be FPS issues when I drop down to around 40-50fps. I'm pretty sure 40fps is more than high enough to look completely smooth to the naked eye. Looks like this won't be fixed by just fine tuning my setup, not sure what else I can do but wait for SE or ATI to fix it.

[Sign]

This game definitely feels poorly optimized atm and still seems to be a little CPU heavy. Hopefully they can keep optimizing the engine over time while working on the other issues. I think other parts of the problem is poorly coded zone buffering and loading. My system really seems to choke around zone lines when it is trying to grab the new set of PC/NPCs etc. It is like it tries to load everything all at once as you get to the zone line. Instead of slowly buffering before you get there. Hopefully this is just due to them not being used to creating borderless worlds and not some misguided design decision.

[Vexerus]

I have similar hardware and will share my experience with you.

i7 930 @ stock 2.8 (mb auto overclock feature bumps to 3.2 under load)
5870 at stock
6mb xms corsair sticks
ffxiv installed on revo pci-e ssd (2x 60gb in raid 0)
25.5'' 1920x1200 monitor

in catalyst control center:

AA - use application settings
AAMode - multi-sample AA (performance)
AF - use application settings
mipmap - high quality

in FF settings:
Windowed 1920x1200
4x MSAA
General Drawing Quality: 8 (standard)
Background Drawing Quality: 5 (high)
Shadow detail: standard
AC and DoF off
Texture quality and texture filtering highest


Game looks amazing. Bazaaring in Ul'dah near repair NPC and I have 40 fps. In most everything I do, fps is a constant 55-60fps. Even before buying an ssd and playing off of a spinpoint TB drive, results were similar. I did experience the stutter every couple seconds which was (annoyingly) noticeable to the eye but fraps would not detect drop in fps. Lowing shadow detail was it for me. Just play with the settings until you find what works best (i know im sure you've tried this).

And I'm sure this goes without mention but they do have 10.x drivers and a FF profile as well on the ATI site.

GPU loads are very often 99% but according to coretemp, my CPU loads are always hovering around 25-45% usage even while running wmp, firefox, fraps and w/e else alongside FFXIV.

Hope me sharing this info has helped in some way.^^

[YukonWildAss]

I really appreciate the post Vexerus! Our hardware really is extremely similar so its a big relief to finally see someone else say that they've experienced the stutter with no accompanying fps drop. Not knowing whether it was the game or something I could personally fix was the most frustrating part. The only difference in our settings right now is Background Drawing Quality which I'm going to try increasing.

I was aware of the drivers and have the latest but I was actually not aware of a FF profile. Do you use this? I'll certainly the FFXIV profile going if it'll help in any way.

Anyways thanks again for your very helpful post!